Someone posted the transcript of Alan Alda’s (Hawkeye) very famous speech as a doctor in a war zone refusing to carry a gun. It was perhaps one of the most poignant of all the poignant speeches in the series and lord knows there were many, many, many poignant statements made on the show exposing war for what it truly is: Messy, lethal and wrong.

It made me think to go on youtube and look for an actual clip to post here. We all love a good video clip, right? And, well, an excuse to post one with Alan Alda is just too good to pass up 🙂

Imagine my surprise when – having found exactly what I was looking for in a seemingly never-ending list of MASH clips, this is what displayed when I clicked on the clip:

(Click images to enlarge)

I was immediately directed to the next clip on the list. It played just fine. So did the one above it and the one above that and the one – well more than a dozen of them all played – just fine. Are they not also under FOX copyright? Head-scratcher, huh?

Hardly.

When FOX was known as 20th Century FOX and produced this series – which was an anti-war, anti-violence novel turned movie turned television series, it’s entire purpose was to demonstrate the insanity of war. And the use of comedy to portray that insanity was pure genius. So what gives? Are today’s FOX producers attempting to re-write the show? Are they that afraid of the Ted Nugents of the world? Or are they getting that much money from the NRA?

I went back to Facebook and retrieved the post featuring the written transcript, just in case you’re too young to remember – or have lived so long you’ve forgotten 🙂

It was on one of my favourite FB pages who call themselves The Other 98%

Thanks Hawkeye for reminding us we can stand up to gun pushers and warmongers, that comedy doesn’t make us weak and history cannot be rewritten on a TV producer’s whim just because the likes of Roger Ailes doesn’t like the original version.

Excellent Oz! I hope it is ok to link this to my FB account and I hope that many others do the same – the link is for the URL to this webpage and fully acknowledges that you are the author. Maybe with hundreds of thousands linked pages, Faux News will get the idea that it is NOT the arbiter of what one wishes to see online.

Please let me know if you don’t want your page linked and I will delete from my FB site.